The traditional basket for a skipole consists of a circular peripheral hoop, to which leather straps crossing at the center of the basket have been fastened, and at the crossing point the pole has been fastened. The advantages achieved with this basket are a large surface area and somewhat elastic central area of the basket. For instance, on hard racing tracks the large surface area of the basket is, however, not needed. It may even be harmful because of atmospheric resistance. Furthermore, this traditional type of basket is relatively heavy, expensive and poorly suited for serial production. Therefore, baskets of plastics have lately increasingly replaced this traditional basket type.
The moving over to baskets of plastics have, however, brought along a new disadvantage, namely increasing stiffness of the basket. When inclining the pole forward during poling motion, the front part exerts a counterforce, risking bounding out of the snow of the spike and slipping of the pole backwardly. Further the torsional moment affects the pole over its entire length and bends it, which slows down skiing and causes increased risk of buckling, need of additional dimensioning, and gain in poleweight. Efforts to correct this disadvantage have resulted in expensive and complicated mechanical joint constructions, by which the basket has been fastend to the pole to be as easily turnable as possible. The disadvantages of the mechanical joint constructions are, except that they are expensive, complicated and heavy, also that the joint is slack functioning, and it can very easily get frozen.
An asymmetric basket construction is known by which the drawbacks mentioned, when inclining the pole, can be avoided. But there is a disadvantage; in that when inclining the pole, the use of the entire bearing surface of the backet is not achieved.